If you’re feeding white-tailed deer this winter, you could be killing them with kindness.
When the winter wind blows and the snow piles up, many Granite Staters worry about the state’s wild creatures. Some hang up bird feeders for our feathered friends. Others put out corn in the mistaken belief that it will help the deer get through the coldest days.
Becky Fuda, deer project leader at the N.H. Fish and Game Department, said that could hurt the very animals they’re trying to protect.
“They have the impression during the winter that the deer don’t have anything to eat,” Fuda said.
But deer have adapted to living here, she said. “They put on a fat layer during the fall and that helps them get through the winter,” she said.
Deer also have adapted to eating woody browse — bark, twigs and buds from woody plants — during the cold season. If leftover mast — acorns and other tree nuts — is accessible through the snow, they’re happy to eat that as well, Fuda said.
“One of the reasons why feeding them can be dangerous is because they have a gut microbiome, and that microbiome adapts to their natural diet during the winter,” she said.
But if deer instead eat corn put out by well-meaning humans, that could upset those natural processes. “That corn is really high in carbohydrates, and so they can’t adapt suddenly to digesting that food,” Fuda said.
That can lead to conditions such as enterotoxemia and rumen acidosis, which can be fatal, she said.
There are other reasons feeding deer is problematic. “Concentrating them unnaturally in these small areas can be more likely to spread diseases, if they’re all eating from the same pile of corn,” Fuda said.
Putting out food also can draw the animals away from their natural wintering areas or deer yards.
Some people feed deer because “they just like to see them,” Fuda said. That’s what one man who called her recently told her, asking for advice on how to best feed deer. “He said, ‘I want them to come around more often so I can see them.’ ”
Fuda refused to give him the advice he sought. “We just don’t want you doing that,” she told him.
As the state’s deer biologist, Fuda fields occasional complaints from residents after deer have eaten their shrubs or vegetable garden. Repellents are available, but the only surefire way to protect those plants is to put up a fence, she said.
The best thing state residents can do to protect the deer herd, she said, is support and improve the natural habitat on which these animals depend.
In the southern regions of the state, that typically means hemlock stands; in the White Mountains and north, it’s spruce and fir stands. “You’re looking for dense conifer stands with thick canopy cover,” she said. “They can use those areas as shelter from the snow and wind.”
It’s been a mild winter so far, Fuda said, so the deer should be faring pretty well.
“Deer have been living here for thousands of years and they’ve adapted to live in this habitat,” she said. “The best thing to do is to allow them to use those adaptations to naturally survive the winter the best they can.”
